Emotional Intelligence – Page 17

Let the Sun Shine

Daylight Savings Time is upon us and I am not a fan. The pessimist in me thinks, “What’s one more hour of lost sleep after all the hours I’ve lost thanks to COVID-19?” The optimist in me thinks, “Yay! Spring!” Since we can’t control time, let’s concentrate on saving something we can control: money. Our financial goals fluctuate with the seasons of our lives, but we sleep better if saving is always one of them. Here are three rules of thumb that give me financial peace of mind: live within your means, fund your future, and be generous.

Live Within Your Means

I’ll state the obvious. Make more money than you spend. Having said that, there are some maybe not-so-obvious ways to save more of your means. Do you use a cell phone? Internet? Cable TV? Satellite TV? Can you live without one of these? If not, are you getting the best plan for your budget? You can check and adjust accordingly. Finding a cheaper plan doesn’t necessarily mean you have to switch providers. You can contact your current one and ask them to match their competitor’s rates. Do you use a travel rewards credit card? If earning points for travel no longer fits your lifestyle, switch to a card that does. For example, while you may not be traveling as much right now, you’re still buying gas and groceries. Switch to a credit card with cash back rewards for those purchases.

Fund Your Future

If you’re getting a tax refund of more than $2000 (the average refund for 2019 was $2535), consider filling out a new W-4 with your employer to have less tax deducted. Some tax payers I know purposely overpay income tax so they’ll receive large refunds. They use the money to pay for big ticket items, and that is a choice. Another choice is a short-term savings strategy for big ticket items. For example, direct depositing that extra amount into a high-yield savings account instead of overpaying income taxes. A tax refund check seems like free money. It’s actually money you give the government every month, it uses for a year (interest free, btw), then finally allows you to have what’s left. If that money stays in your paycheck, you have the option to invest it in your employer’s 401(k) plan, or your personal IRA, or another long-term savings option. This both removes the temptation to spend the money, and invests it for your future.

Be Generous

You feel good when you help others. Think about how good Ebeneezer Scrooge felt when he was generous with his money. But you don’t have to give money to be generous. For example, when your grocery has non-perishable items on sale and you have coupons, buy the limit, keep a couple for yourself and donate the rest to a local food pantry. Do you have clothes you haven’t worn for two years? (Not wearing them in 2020 doesn’t count.) Bag them up and donate them to your local thrift store. When you don’t have a lot of money, you still have something to give; even if it’s just giving a smile to a stranger; with our eyes, because, you know, mask. Our abundance isn’t always measured in money.

What do you do to maintain financial peace of mind? Please share in the comments.

A Matter of Trust

**Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels**

This is the last article of the series Know, Like, Trust. If you missed the first two, you can find them here and here. I saved trust for last because it’s pretty hard to achieve without the other two. Let’s say a Potential Client (PC) knows and likes us. Now, how can we earn their trust?

Respect

Becoming known and liked can happen relatively quickly, but trust doesn’t. It takes time to demonstrate integrity, dependability, and consistency. PCs trust our companies after they trust us as people. We need to accurately represent what our companies stand for and broadcast those core values through multiple communication channels. We should be prepared to answer frequently asked questions like:

Can your company really do what you say it can? We’re able to answer this with a testimonial page on our companies’ websites.
Do you really want to help my business succeed? We prove this by sharing our PCs’ “We’re Hiring!” posts on our companies’ social media platforms.
Are we like-minded in our values? We affirm this with a how-we-help statement in every employees’ elevator speech.

We know we’re earning our PCs’ trust when they begin liking, commenting on, and/or sharing our social media content. Sharing is especially exciting. It indicates our PCs are engaging with, endorsing, and embracing our companies’ value-driven content.

Realign

The biggest mistake we make in communication is assuming it has happened. Paraphrasing what our PCs said, reflecting it back, and repeating the process until we verify we heard correctly, demonstrates we not only want to understand the problems, but we are also actively listening. Initially, this exercise is time consuming, but realigning our communication style to our PCs’ streamlines the process for future conversations. Being in accord with our PCs is crucial when it’s time to address sensitive issues. For example, how we will handle our PCs’ customers’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Resource

After all this work, we may discover we aren’t the best solution for a PC. Our role then becomes connecting them to someone who is, because we are in relationship with our PCs for the life of their businesses. We demonstrate both trust and courage when we offer, “What you need isn’t what we’re best at, but I know someone who is.” It’s important to have an established network of colleagues we know, like, and trust to partner with so when this happens, we’re ready to refer them. It not only solves our PCs’ current problem, but also sets us up as the future go-to, trouble-shooting resource. When our PCs’ next crises strikes, we will be the first people they reach out to for help. Referrals build trust between all businesses involved in reaching solutions. People love to connect people they trust to one another. When we pay it forward, our colleagues feel obliged to repay in kind by connecting us with one of their PCs whose problem we can better solve. The loyalty these relationships inspire can help everyone’s companies grow exponentially. When our PCs trust us, they want to keep collaborating with us. Who doesn’t want to work with someone who solves their problems?

What do you do to prove your trustworthiness to PCs? Please share in the comments.

What’s Not to Like?

Welcome to part two of the three part series: Know, Like, Trust. Last week we discussed how we want to be known. This week we’re talking about the importance of being liked. It reminds me of Sally Field accepting her Oscar for Places in the Heart. How can we attractively communicate both our values and our value propositions?

Make an Effort

Potential clients (PCs) work with individual problem solvers, not faceless companies. For example, let’s say you chose a primary care physician based on their affiliation with a hospital you like. During your appointment you have a bad experience with either the physician, nurse, tech, or front desk staff. You don’t go back because there are plenty of other physicians associated with the hospital you like. It’s a similar experience for our PCs. They want to know the people who represent our companies. They can only discern so much from success story pages on our websites, automated emails dripped into their inboxes, and video sales pitches. We have to make and maintain authentic, reciprocal relationships if we want glowing recommendations, positive reviews, quality referrals, and repeat business. These are the ingredients that protect our bottom lines. It takes a ton of energy to put the work into every interaction, every day. But, if we give PCs reasons to like us, (e.g., positive comments on their LinkedIn posts, an emailed link to an event you think they’ll enjoy, etc.) they will.

Be Approachable

Even if we don’t say the following sentences aloud, PCs can easily detect negative attitudes like:

Authoritative – “I’m smarter than you.”
Aloof – “I’m too cool for you.”
Abrupt – “I don’t have time for you.”

PCs open their lives to us. They’re considering using us as a resource to meet their needs at a time when they feel vulnerable. In conversations with us they’re wondering:

Is she listening to me?
Does she care how much pain I’m in?
Do her questions help me order my thoughts?
Are her illustrations relevant?
Is she just trying to make a sale?
After I purchase this, will she follow up to see if the solution worked?
If something goes wrong, can I count on her to fix it?
Does she have the best interest of my business at heart?

A good consultant is authentic, curious, and honest. To have a friend, you first have to be one.

Care

Best practice is offering our PCs space to unload the emotional baggage their problems have packed. To be liked, we have to care about their pain. Active listening is a great tool to demonstrate how much we care. Active listening requires more than our ears. It takes our:

Brains: How would we feel if we had this problem?
Eyes: What non-verbals do we observe (e.g., furrowed brow, crossed arms)?
Hands: We take notes both to prevent ourselves from interrupting and so we don’t forget the response forming in our heads.

PCs need partners they can count on, who are strong in the areas of their businesses where they are weak, and to come alongside them with the tools to grow their businesses. We want to form a team. Because when businesses support one another, everyone on the team wins.

When we make the effort to be approachable and to care, people like us. This is how businesses are sustained. This is how communities are built. What do you do to get PCs to like you? Please share your tips in the comments.

How Do You Spell Relief? E-m-p-a-t-h-y

The longer COVID drags on, the more fragile we feel. If everyone feels this way, it’s affecting the companies we serve. We need clients to buy our products and services, but desperation has a way of creeping into our subconscious and leaking out in our presentations. It’s neither attractive nor productive. We have to be willing to brainstorm our clients’ current problems and help them weigh the value of possible solutions – even if we are not the relief for their immediate pain point. Should we pay more attention to the role empathy can play in business? If so, how do we communicate it?

Care

It’s nice to do business with nice people. Given current events, even nice business people are stressed and stress can shorten anyone’s fuse. We have no idea what is going on with our clients outside of our relationships with them, and they may not be comfortable sharing. We should not take any atypical negative attitude personally. We should assume in showing up, our clients are coping as best they can. This is an opportunity for us to provide them with a respite. Remind them blue-sky thinking with us is a valuable idea-generation tool. Validate their efforts by telling them they’re doing a good job.

Pay Attention

When we meet with a client, we need to read the room (or the Zoom). Is she fidgety, grumpy, quiet? Does she look tired, worried, distracted? What about her body language? Is she slouching? Avoiding eye contact? The words she uses are also a clue. We should listen for emotionally charged words and the tone of voice she uses to say them. To find the emotions underneath the exterior, we can start the conversation with the obvious, “How are you doing? How is the family? How is business going?” We are looking for a point of connection. This is trickier than it sounds. For example, empathy is not the client laying out a scenario and me replying, “I know exactly how you feel because that happened to me too once.” While I may have experienced the same situation, my interpretation of it inevitably differs from my client’s. I discredit myself and discount my client if I say I know exactly how she feels. My goal is to understand her experience and feel her unique position with her in the moment. It’s more genuine to say, “Tell me more,” than “ I know how you feel because I…” We’re working to create a safe and judgement-free zone.

Listen

It’s extremely counterintuitive, but don’t problem solve at this point. It’s way too early in the process. Our clients want to feel heard and understood. They’re in pain and need relief. We have to demonstrate our desire to uncover why the pain exists in the first place. How would we feel if we were the ones experiencing this pain?

Not every meeting has to end with submitting a proposal. People can tell when we’re in relationship with them just to see how much we can gain from it. With a mindset of our success is tied to the success of our clients, we develop a sustainable business model based on mutual respect and trust and can build relationships that last for years.

How do you empathize with your clients without veering into problem solving? Please share your story in the comments section.

Another Christmas Story

Once upon a time, December was the busiest month of the year.

Holiday parties – my husband’s work, my work, our daughter’s school
Gifts – making a list (and checking it twice), buying, wrapping, personally delivering or shipping
Christmas cards – buying, writing the end-of-year-family newsletter, addressing, buying postage, mailing
Cooking – planning the menus, making a grocery list (also checking it twice) purchasing the ingredients, cooking, serving
Decorating – pulling decorations out of storage, repairing the damaged, purchasing new
Miscellaneous traditions – driving around to see Christmas lights, baking and delivering cookies for first responders, attending Christmas Eve service

My fingers are tired from typing this. At the time it was fun. We love putting on ugly Christmas sweaters, gathering with friends and family and coworkers and celebrating the season, right? Or do we just love the idea of it? We downplay the stress of its reality. Our brains exhausted from holiday office party small talk. Our savings account spent on gifts for neighbors we barely know. Our cupboards bare from constantly replenishing the buffet at our extended family’s feast. Our vision of the perfect holiday is rarely realized since we can’t control the players, and this holiday season, there isn’t much of anything we can control.

During our first holiday season in Georgia, my husband was a worship leader, our daughter was in elementary school, and I was a teacher’s aide. By the morning of Christmas Eve, all three of us were exhausted from, well, see the list above. Working multiple Christmas Eve services, my husband was unavailable from early morning until late evening. Our daughter and I attended the first service. We grabbed tins of cookies the congregation baked for first responders on our way out. In the car, we ordered pizza before leaving the parking lot. By the time we dropped off the cookies at the firehouse located between the church and the restaurant, our pizza was waiting for us at the drive-thru. We got home and put on our jammies (it was only about 1:00PM, btw). I found White Christmas on TV. We ate pizza. We sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus, blew out the candles on His cake, and ate slices for Him. We napped. When my husband got home, we repeated the process. We watched Christmas movies, stuffed our faces, and napped for the next 24 hours. Christmas Day ended with a drive through a local coffee shop for lattes and hot chocolate and meandering through neighboring subdivisions to look at their Christmas lights on the way back home. We did not answer the phone or check social media the entire time. It was the most relaxed the three of us had been since Thanksgiving. When the next year rolled around our daughter asked if we could do it again. I dubbed it “cocooning” and it became a tradition for the rest of our Georgia residency.

Several of our holiday activities aged out. I no longer send a year-end family newsletter. I refer everyone to social media. Email makes sending season’s greetings both quick and inexpensive. Because of COVID-19, more traditions are canceled this year and if I’m honest, I’m sorry, not sorry. We have plenty of options to cocoon. We can:

have food delivered either from our grocery to make our favorite treats, or from a local restaurant. If we order through a food delivery service, we keep a local driver employed
stream most any Christmas movie ever made
have decorations and jammies delivered from a local department store
stream holiday music playlists from our chosen service
send a cookie gift basket to our nearest firehouse through a local bakery
watch our church’s Christmas Eve service on their website
make our own lattes and hot chocolate and tour neighborhood Christmas light displays from our couch thanks to YouTube (For my Dayton, Ohio friends, you can see the old Rike’s holiday windows virtually)

This global crisis has given us a holiday gift: a reason to celebrate small. Do you usually:

travel 312 miles to stay with the in-laws? Can’t this year; COVID
spend hundreds of dollars on gifts? Can’t this year; COVID
attend your partner’s office holiday party? Can’t this year; COVID.

The pandemic has taken people we love, employment we need, and freedoms we cherish away from us. But, it has given us a reason to stop, be grateful for what we still have, and act on it. Let’s celebrate through our words and (maybe virtual) presence the people we’ve leaned on, both personally and professionally, to get through 2020. Isn’t that the essence of the holidays? Making sure people know how much we appreciate them?

How are you adjusting your holiday celebrations this year? Please share in the comments.

Can You Feel the Heat?

This COVID Christmas feels off just enough to make us lose our balance. For example, our daughter called me during her commute home the other night. She was stressed. She’d spent eight mask-wearing-social-distancing hours at her office and was rushing home in Chicago traffic to set up the work station in her apartment. She was scheduled to guest on a college’s webcast to promote her company to their student listeners. As I tried to extinguish the fire of her burnout over the phone from 316 miles away and five minutes before Jeopardy!, she accused me of speaking in lyrics from Hamilton, an American Musical. Can you blame me? It has several relatable scenes of characters striving for work-life balance; “Non-Stop” being the most obvious.

The focus of the song “Non-Stop” is Alexander Hamilton writing The Federalist Papers, but he’s got a lot going on in addition. He’s practicing law. He’s a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He’s distracted by Angelica Schuyler’s move to London and impending marriage. His wife, Eliza, pressures him to accompany her and their children on a summer vacation to her dad’s place, and George Washington enlists him to lead the Treasury Department. Alexander was both working from home and homing from work. Sound familiar?

Maybe you don’t practice law, but you do own a business
You aren’t a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but maybe you are a board chair
Maybe you aren’t distracted by a friend moving across the ocean, but you are preoccupied by your child’s intent to move into his college’s student housing
Maybe you aren’t being pressured by your wife to accompany her and your children to the in-law’s place for a holiday, but, wait; maybe you are
Maybe you haven’t been approached to lead the Treasury Department, but you are concerned about leading your sales department through the rest of Q4

Add the holiday season to any one of the above scenarios and you’re on the road to burnout. So what can you do? Tap the brakes.

Ways to Combat Holiday Burnout

Take a day (or even just half a day) of vacation and get your hair done; particularly if you get a paid holiday off this month. The extra time spent on your appearance will make you feel better
Phone a friend. We’re all feeling a little mental right now. Find out how he is coping. Stay connected to people; especially the ones you care about and who care about you
Find your release. Take a walk outside. Listen to a true-crime podcast. Take a power nap. Snuggle your pet. Browse memes. Whatever it is, take fifteen minutes to decompress
Change your scenery. If you’re working from home, don’t conference call in the same room every time
Do something holiday themed. Wrap a Hanukkah gift. Bake Christmas cookies. Plan the Karamu menu. Switch to egg nog instead of coffee

I can’t believe I just suggested a drink other than coffee.

What are you doing to battle holiday burnout? Please share your tips and tricks in the comments section.

A Mind at Work

I got offended at work. I sought clarity from a couple outsiders. Both suggested I check my ego. Turns out, ego doesn’t always mean liking ourselves too much. Do you know ego also causes us to stay quiet to protect ourselves from perceived harm?

Fight or Flight

The fight or flight response kicks in whenever our sense of self is challenged. If we find our identity in our job and we’re asked to do something that’s not our job, (e.g., a CEO asked to serve coffee at a board meeting) our boundary is crossed and fight or flight activates. This could look like getting defensive, “I’m the CEO, not the barista.” Or, allowing the breach, “Do you want cream and sugar?” Ego can convince us to do things that undermine our success. For example: If I binge watch Hulu the night before a webinar instead of rehearsing, when I deliver a lousy presentation, I can blame Hulu instead of acknowledging my failure. If I give a lousy presentation, it’s unlikely I’ll be asked to give another one, thus preventing the possibility of future failure. Ego mitigates risk for us to protect our self-esteem, but that protection may deny us opportunity for future success.

Ego or Calling

Both feed ambition, produce comparable results, and spur us to work hard. Is calling healthy and ego not? Actually, they need to work together. Ego is our mind’s bodyguard. It protects us from worrying so much about what others think that we’re too paralyzed to make decisions. It’s the version of ourselves everyone sees. But its operating system is based on fear. Its tone is urgent, implying something bad will happen if we stop hammering away at the project. Ego needs to be balanced by calling. Calling is our authentic self. It whispers reminders of what we care about and encourages us to see our work through its filter.

Asset or Liability

The boss wants employees who get things done. She’s likely too busy with her own responsibilities to monitor ours. How will she know we do good work unless we tell her? Ego can help us track when we go above and beyond our job descriptions, especially when those efforts pay off big time for the company. This is not bragging. This is owning the fruits of our labor. If we have regular 1:1s with our managers, that is the time to shine, but if not, we can draw on ego to prepare a list for the next performance review. This is also a good time to use ego to inform our supervisors of our career development intentions. Going for a promotion? Use ego to voice that desire. It can help us illustrate how we already fulfill the responsibilities of the next title on the company’s career path.

Ego is a powerful tool and we need to wield it for good. If we can recognize when we’re in a situation that triggers ego, we can stop and question why. Then use it to navigate the situation. Do we need ego to cheerlead? (“I can do this hard thing.”) Or do we need it to go back in the tool box? (“I can let my team help me do this hard thing, and share the credit.”)

How have you focused your ego lately? Please share you story in the comments section.